Of course, there are lots of ways that social media can influence politics beyond any direct influence on public attitudes. Rather than shaping what we citizens think, social media could well shape what politicians think we think.

This = from a NORC Feb./March 2024 survey. Blue line shows the weighted average of affective polarization--the absolute difference in ratings of the Republicans & Democrats on the y-axis--by number of days getting news on social media (x-axis). Not a strong relationship.

"While this trend is serious and dangerous, it is one of individual radicalization, not a coherent mass movement. It is a whisper aimed at the unstable man in his basement — validating his terror of a murderous opposition." Sean Westwood at Politico: www.politico.com/news/magazin...

A new study by LDI Fellows Sara Handley and Emily Gregory finds rural parents face more hospitalizations & barriers to postpartum care than urban peers, while babies fare better overall. Integrating parent care into infant visits could help. Read more: https://bit.ly/46cEnDM

I remember so much about that morning 24 years ago in NYC--how clear the day was after the storms the day before. How a thin trail of smoke in an otherwise clear sky was the first I knew of the tragedy. How it was followed by an intense cloud once the Towers collapsed. 1/

Despite their well-documented flaws, I think universities are uniquely positioned to help the US think through the complex economic, social, political, legal, ethical, technological, & military questions raised by contemporary and emerging uses of AI.

RIP, Ken Dryden. And my condolences to Sarah and family. www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

In my NORC 2024 panel, respondents who didn't match to the voter file were *18.5 percentage points* more pro-Trump than the sample overall. My guess: Trump voters were less willing to give the information needed to match to voter records.

I'm going to sidestep the substantive ?s & broadsides in this Nate Silver post. Its coda does pose a dilemma for academics. I agree social media has been bad for public perceptions of academics. What posts go viral? Those of interest outside academia. www.natesilver.net/p/real-talk-... 1/

Grateful to have been quoted in this @perrybaconjr.bsky.social piece in the @postopinions.bsky.social on the politics of Medicaid cuts: img.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Shot (from @politico.com Playbook); chaser (from my book on public opinion & the ACA)

The Senate just passed a major reconciliation bill with no Democratic support (mirroring passage of the ACA, IRA). But would Americans support broad bipartisan compromises? My new paper with Paul Lendway & Gall Sigler--"Public Support for Cross-Issue Compromises in the U.S."--says yes. Quick 🧵

As the Senate GOP moves forward with the reconciliation bill, some (most?) of the lessons from the Affordable Care Act about public opinion--which I highlighted in my book "Stable Condition"--still apply. www.russellsage.org/publications...

My survey also asked NYC Democrats about their views & their sense of Cuomo & Mamdani's views on key issues. Agreement/disagreement on what questions predicted first-round support? * ideology ✅ * crime ✅ * housing ❌ * congestion pricing ❌ * Israeli/Palestinian conflict ❌

Our 2nd wave also asked about potential Nov. match-ups mentioning only Cuomo or Mamdani but not both. Cuomo (D) - 45 Sliwa (R) - 15 E. Adams (I) - 5 Other - 7 Wouldn't Vote - 28 Mamdani (D) - 40 Sliwa (R) - 18 E. Adams (I) - 14 Other - 3 Wouldn't Vote - 25

I wish I had more & more recent data, but here is a table showing wave-2 Democratic NYC respondents' first and second choices. * Cuomo backers way more likely to be undecided on 2nd choice. * 45% of Mamdani backers -> Lander 2nd * Lander voters roughly split between Mamdani, Stringer 2nd

While we're all for a brief moment thinking about polling in mayoral elections, just a reminder that my co-authors & I on this JREP article 👇 found that polling non-white voters & voters with less education can be really hard, especially in primaries. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Here is a plot showing the shifting support across the Democratic mayoral candidates in our @today.yougov.com two-wave panel of NYC Democrats. * Our second wave was May 27-June 16. * Cuomo -> 47% of first-choice preferences. * Mamdani -> 22% of first-choices preferences.

We're getting ready to release some toplines from the second wave of our NYC panel with @today.yougov.com, which included 443 respondents May 27th-June 16th, 2025. Here's a teaser, though. Of those New Yorkers who have a favorite baseball team, Yankees top the Mets 59%-34%.

Second, also in Political Behavior, @dhopkins1776.bsky.social and Gall Sigler use panel data and precinct returns to look at how predictive ideology is in party primary candidate preference. Answer: a little but not very. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I had the opportunity to write about the politics of the proposed Medicaid cuts for @pennldi.bsky.social, drawing on my book "Stable Condition" about public opinion towards the Affordable Care Act. ldi.upenn.edu/our-work/res...

📃 NEW PAPER 📃 Excited to release a new paper, “Who polices which boundaries? How racial self-identification affects external classification,” with co-authors Maria Abascal, Amada Armenta & @wmhalm.bsky.social. Forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology. URL: osf.io/preprints/so... Brief 🧵

Since 2016, 1 notable pro-GOP shift has come from Latinos. How did Latinos shift towards a party taking strong positions against unauthorized immigration? @wpmarble.bsky.social & I use population-based panel surveys to help answer that in a new paper: osf.io/preprints/so... Quick 🧵

I had the opportunity to write about the politics of the proposed Medicaid cuts for @pennldi.bsky.social, drawing on my book "Stable Condition" about public opinion towards the Affordable Care Act. ldi.upenn.edu/our-work/res...

American higher education is one of our stand-out export industries. Except instead of just getting the product abroad, the customers come spend years here consuming it, with all kinds of positive economic & cultural impacts for the host communities & the international students.

Here's what I said re: the ACA's lessons for the IRA's politics in my 2023 book "Stable Condition." The IRA avoided provoking a mass-level backlash by avoiding directly imposing large costs (see the individual mandate & cancelled plans). But its tangible benefits were more limited than the ACA's.

But there was plenty of evidence that this didn't happen with the ACA, so why did we expect it with the IRA, where some of the key benefits weren't as tangible as health insurance?

From this result alone, you wouldn't necessarily think that it would be the GOP pursuing an upwardly redistributive reconciliation bill in 2025.

The House bill will affect American voters in many ways. How are they likely to respond politically? My book "Stable Condition" on the ACA offers some suggestions... tl;dr the policies most likely to change voters' minds are those that take things away. 1/

In Dec. '24 & Jan. '25, we polled GOP & Democratic political activists with @today.yougov.com . Cutting taxes on people making over $400K was among the least popular policies we polled. Medicaid work requirements won a majority of activists; expanding Medicare was more popular.

Recommend this podcast on the May 13, 1985 MOVE bombing here in Philadelphia and the events that led up to it: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

As the Cornyn-Paxton TX primary heats up, it's a good time to report that my paper with Gall O. Sigler, "Not of Primary Concern: Assessing Ideological Voting over Time in U.S. Primaries, 2008-2024" has been accepted by @polbehavior.bsky.social. URL: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Here's a 🧵... 1/

Deeply concerning about the proliferation of uses of ChatGPT for cheating in college courses. I wonder if one solution is to have students start the semester with an in-class writing exercise to get a baseline and develop a sense of their authorial fingerprint. www.msn.com/en-us/news/t...

Congratulations to @eunjikim.bsky.social on the publication of "The American Mirage"--really excited to have it and read it soon.

To other higher ed faculty and staff, any experience with grade caps or other policies to deal with grade inflation? Any sense of what's worked?

Anyone see good deep dives into yesterday's Canadian election? All recommendations welcome.

One very clear change from our October/November 2024 survey of Canadians to our March/April 2025 survey of those same (n=1,181) respondents is the 10 percentage point jump in those saying being Canadian is their single most important identity.

With Canada's 4/28 election approaching, we're excited to release the second wave of an online panel survey. N=1,221 Canadians 18+; wave 2 was 3/31/25-4/21/25. This is unweighted & 28% for the Conservatives in the fall was likely too low. Still, check out the remarkable movement to the Liberals.

A Penn student's case for increasing the number of students here: www.thedp.com/article/2025...

With @today.yougov.com we conducted an NYC poll 3/13-4/1/25. Here, we show the 1st & 2nd choices for 326 Democratic registrants who gave a 1st choice (before Adams left the Dem field). * Adams backers are much more likely to back Cuomo 2nd. * Mamdani, Myrie supporters -> tend to back Lander 2nd.

Congratulations to @miacosta.bsky.social on the publication of "How Politicians Polarize"--from the opening pages, this seems like the book I was waiting for but hadn't realized it.

Deeply grateful for the opportunity to stand with fellow Penn professors from 4 departments to read the Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, & select Federalist Papers yesterday to call us back to our founding ideals. Grateful, too, to the DP for coverage: www.thedp.com/article/2025...